---
title: Little Alice guessed why he did not come, and so she said to her pap… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Little Alice guessed why he did not come, and so she said to her papa,-- Who acts: Little Alice, Alice, Mr.. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, III. the Venture., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/51/5/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, III. the Venture., sentence 5

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Little Alice guessed why he did not come, and so she said to her papa,--

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**Who acts:** Little Alice, Alice, Mr. · **What happens:** guess, not come, say · **To what, where:** papa · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, III. the Venture.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Little Alice, Alice, Mr.), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg18442:51:5
# text = Little Alice guessed why he did not come, and so she said to her papa,--
1	Little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	Alice	Alice	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	guessed	guess	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	8	advmod	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
6	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
7	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
8	come	come	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
11	so	so	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
12	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
14	to	to	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	papa	papa	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **guess** | past | Little Alice |  |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **not** **come** | past · do-support | Alice |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Mr. |  | Mr.'s papa |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to papa=Recipient |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 18442 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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